Language ideologies in multilingual Tanzania: parental discourses, school realities, and contested visions of schooling
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Language ideologies shape ways in which different learners’ linguistic repertoires are positioned as resources or problems, with significant implications for educational access and equity. In Tanzania, tensions between the national language of Kiswahili and high-status English have given rise to two parallel schooling systems, while 130+ local languages are effectively muted in formal schooling. This comparative study explores how Maa (Maasai language), Kiswahili, and English are discursively constructed by parents and teachers at one Kiswahili-medium government school and one English-medium private school in a predominantly Maasai community in northern Tanzania, and examines how these languages are positioned pedagogically at both schools. Education for Self-Reliance (Nyerere 1967/2004 Nyerere, Julius. 1967/2004. “Education for Self Reliance.” In Nyerere on Education/Nyerere Kuhusu Elimu, edited by Elieshi Lema, Marjorie Mbilinyi, and Rakesh Rajani, 67–88. Dar es Salaam: E&D Limited.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]. “Education for Self Reliance.” In Nyerere on Education/Nyerere Kuhusu Elimu, edited by Elieshi Lema, Marjorie Mbilinyi, and Rakesh Rajani, 67–88. Dar es Salaam: E&D Limited) and Duchêne and Heller’s (2012. Language in Late Capitalism: Pride and Profit. New York: Routledge) work on ‘pride and profit’ provide theoretical lenses. Findings show that parents’ strong appreciation for multilingualism contrasts with schools’ monoglossic ideologies; discourses of nationalism and identity vary dramatically depending on parents’ educational background; and Maasai language and culture are constructed unambiguously as problems in schooling. The linguistic, ideological, and cultural divide between home and school, and between respective schools, is problematised. This paper addresses implications for debates on language education in Tanzania and beyond, exploring possibilities for pluralistic ideologies of nationalism that create space for multilingual and multicultural resources.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".